Note 1 — III. Capitalism and Social Ideas (Capital and Human Labour)

The purely economic value of any commodity (or work done, in so far as it finds expression in the money that represents its equivalent value), will depend on the efficiency in economic administration developed by the body economic. It will depend on the measures taken by the economic administration, how fertile economic life can become on the basis afforded by the spiritual and “rights” systems of the body social. The money-value of a commodity will then indicate, that the economic organisation is producing the commodity in a quantity corresponding to the want for it. Supposing the premises laid down in this book to be realised, the body economic will not be dominated by the impulse to amass wealth through sheer quantity of production; but the production of goods will adapt itself to wants, through the agency of the associative guilds that will spring up in all manner of connections. In this way, the proportion, that in each case corresponds to the actual want, will become established between the money-value of an article and the arrangements made in the body social for producing it.1 In the healthy social organism, money will really be nothing but a measure of value; since, behind every money piece, or money token, there stands the tangible piece of production, on the strength of which alone the owner of the money could come by it. These conditions will, of their nature, necessitate arrangements being made, which will deprive money of its value for its possessor, when once it has lost its original significance. Arrangements of this sort have already been alluded to. Money property passes back, after a fixed period, into the common pool, in whatever the proper form may be; and to prevent money, withdrawn from use in industry, being held back by its possessors to the evasion of the provisions made by the economic organisation, there can be a new coinage, or re-stamping, from time to time. One result of this will no doubt be, that the interest derived from any capital sum will diminish as years go on. Money will wear out, just as commodities wear out. Nevertheless, such a measure will be a right and just one for the State to enact. There can be no compound interest. If a person lays by savings, he has certainly rendered past services that gave him a claim on future counter-service in commodities,—just as present services claim present service in exchange. But his claims cannot go beyond a certain limit; for claims, that date from the past, require present labour-services to satisfy them; and they must not be turned into a means of economic coercion. The practical realisation of these principles will put the problem of safeguarding the money standard upon a sound basis. For, no matter what form money may take owing to other conditions, the safeguard of its standard lies in the intelligent organisation of the whole body economic through its administrature. The problem of safeguarding the money standard will never be satisfactorily solved through any State by means of law. The present States will only solve it, when they give up attempting the solution on their own account, and leave the body economic to do what is needful, after it is detached from the State.